Running covert ops at City Hall and Chicago Public Schools (CPS)

A desperate and seemingly dispirited Barbara Byrd-Bennett (head of chicago public schools), faced with a bubbling community revolt, is now relying on a highly-paid retired Marine colonel with a staff of 40 to organize her covert-ops Chicago's mass school-closing fiasco. His name is Tom Tyrell and his preparation for this coming assault on the city's black and Latino communities is his "prisoner-exchange" work in Kosovo. Metaphors abound.

Tyrrell moves from the military to Wall St.. Here he rings the opening bell at the NASDAQ stock exchange in New York City on May 27, 2005 (File:US Navy 050527-N-2114S-002 )

Actually, Col. Tyrell's work went far beyond what the S-T calls "prisoner-exchange" work. In his own words, "It was determining how to integrate the weapons systems and training routines to transform the military into what we have today."

I'm not sure what, if anything Col. Tyrell knows about Chicago. But he is about to learn some things. He previously worked as Chief Operating Officer for the Intrepid Sea*Air*Space Museum in New York City, "helping instill in young people some of the virtues" of the military. His other "work" experience was as Chairman of the Board for Via Novus Capital. Perfect!

To get an idea of where Rahm and Co. are headed with this new militarization strategy, consider his hiring last week of a former Green Beret, U.S. Army Lt. Colonel-turned-venture capitalist Stephen Beitler to serve as its $170,000-a-year executive director is his so-called Infrastructure Trust. Beitler is a founder and managing director of Dunrath Capital, a venture capital firm specializing in infrastructure security and defense companies...

“He was involved in a lot of covert operations. He’s really not comfortable talking about his military service because so much of it is classified,” said Tracey Mendrek, a spokeswoman for the trust.

Yes, Perfect! Lt. Col. Beitler, along with Col. Tyrell are just the guys Rahm needs to run covert operations over at City Hall and CPS.